1. CALM PEOPLE GO TO A HAPPY PLACE IN THEIR HEAD

The project is due, but something has gone wrong. Your child’s attitude has been especially sassy today. Or maybe the grocery store clerk is just moving too, darn slowly. No matter what the trigger for your stress is summoning a memory that makes you feel calm, secure, and happy will immediately relax you. This visualization technique allows stress and tension levels to drop immediately, and any pain you’re feeling in the moment to lessen so that you can stay calm and relaxed. The more you use this technique, the less stressed you’ll get. As you practice thinking about your happy place again and again, unprocessed memory is now linked to the happy place. Not only do they keep you from getting stressed out, but they keep you from getting as triggered as often.

2. CALM PEOPLE DON’T WORK AS MUCH, BUT GET MORE DONE

It turns out the relationship between work time and productiveness is not completely linear, according to The Economist. Data from the OECD shows that more productive workers spend less time at the office: While Greek workers spent over 2,000 hours a year at work on average, Germans only worked about 1,400 hours, and their productivity was 70 percent higher. Sometimes fewer work hours encourages you to produce higher-quality work. So if you’ve already put in a long day and there’s still more to do, it might be better to pick it back up the next day after some rest.

3. CALM PEOPLE MANAGE NERVES BY GETTING EXCITED, RATHER THAN RELAXED

Have you ever been told to ‘relax’ prior to making a big speech, taking an exam, or performing in some other potentially stressful situation? While calming yourself is definitely a good first step, research from Harvard Business School shows that you may perform better if you reappraise your anxiety as excitement. In a study measuring students’ performance on a set of difficult math problems, students who were told to ‘try to get excited’ rather than to remain calm scored significantly higher.

4. CALM PEOPLE EXERCISE WHEN THEY’RE WELL-RESTED, AND TAKE REST DAYS WHEN THEY’RE NOT

Yes, exercise has phenomenal health effects, including stress relief—so regular workouts will help you feel calmer. But a study published in the journal Military Psychology showed that while sleep-deprived aviators who engaged in 10-minute bouts of exercise felt more alert directly afterward, the exercise had facilitated more slow-wave brain activity, or lack of alertness, 50 minutes later. These findings shouldn’t shift you out of your regular exercise routine; they just point out that in sleep-deprived times when you need to stay alert for more than an hour, a short nap may prove more effective than a short run.

5. CALM PEOPLE MEDITATE CONSISTENTLY

When Alex Tew, founder of the meditation website and app Calm, started meditating at age 15, he immediately felt more relaxed during his day-to-day life. But it wasn’t until he made a habit of meditating once every day, even for just a few minutes, that he felt its full effects, he says. ‘If you build the habit of meditation you’ll be better able to deal with stresses and you’ll be better able to respond,’ he says. Consistently setting aside time to be calm every day, even if it’s just doing some deep breathing in the morning before work, helps settle the mind for the rest of the day, Tew says. ‘If you’re new to meditation, just start with some deep breathing. Take 10 deep breaths in the morning before you leave the house, and just get into that habit of pausing before you rush off into the day.’ When you’re stressed later, you’ll be able to handle the situation with a calm mind.

6. IN TIMES OF SLEEP DEPRIVATION, CALM PEOPLE NAP AND DRINK COFFEE

A study measuring the effects of napping, caffeine, and their combination on the performance of shift workers concluded that while both napping and caffeine individually increased alertness and decreased sleepiness, a combination of the two was most effective. So if you’re running on little sleep and in need of a power boost, catch a few minutes of sleep, then grab a cup of coffee. You’ll get the best of both worlds.

7. CALM PEOPLE FOCUS ON WHAT’S HAPPENING IN THE MOMENT

It’s very easy to let yourself ponder past blunders or worry about the future, but one of the most important mindfulness techniques someone can practice, according to psychotherapist Donald Altman, is ‘fidelity to the moment.’ ‘The real sign of being frazzled is that you’re stuck up in your head,’ says Altman, author of the books 101 Mindful Ways to Build Resilience and Clearing Emotional Clutter. ‘You have all these thoughts about the future, and so your head is spinning, and one way to stop that is to drop back into the body. Notice your feet on the floor, take a nice breath.’ By participating fully in the present, Altman says you can change your relationship with what’s happening around you, so that you don’t necessarily have to react as strongly to it. That means rather than lashing out automatically or doing something you’ll regret later, you have the ability to choose your response to stress.

Elite entrepreneurs that are successful in getting the funding and attract capital do:

1. Articulate your opportunity in 90 seconds or less. Describe your business in simple why it’s simple and why it could be hug.

2. Explain why they are the right person and their team are the best person to get the job done. How are we going to get there, and tell them you know what you are going and where you are going.

3. You have the know the numbers. When people ask you about the business, the market, the product, gross margins, the break even, you need to know what the numbers are.

Critical Attributes in Entrepreneurship

1. Employee’s are valuable assets but they are not your friends. The biggest mistake people make is that running a business is not a social club. It’s understand when people don’t fit their organization and then making the thought decisions and fire them. Family business is the hardest because you might have to fire your mother, or your sister because your trying to keep your business alive to support your family yourself.

2. Maintain a really strong line of command and set goals. Real leaders know how to take heat. Everyday there’s a fire in your business and you’ve got to fix it every single day. You need the ability not to procrastinate, and fix it. Great leaders don’t wait, they get up and just go do it.

3. To be a top performers and get ahead in your business set the top three things done before noon every single day. Then start checking your e-mails and phone calls.

4. Some guy in India, China, Canada, is working 25 hours a day and are ready to kick your ass. They want something that you’ve already achieve and ready to take it from you. That’s the nature of business, it’s global today and you’ve got to be competitive.

5. Make sure the sale person is making more than you, because without sales you don’t have a business. The man of woman that is running your sales should make more than you, never cap them. If you’re the founder you own the stock, you own the company. There making your business more valuable every single day.

6. Wake up in the morning and understand that business is war. You’re out there to make money for your shareholders, make good products and services for your customers, keep your employee’s in a place to spend their life with you. There’s winners and losers in business. You’ve got to decide which one is you.

7. Look for People who know what they are doing, with great executional skills. Entrepreneurship is not a 9-5 a day. It’s working 25 and your competition is working 26 hours.

8. When everything is out of control you’ve got to have the ability to stay focused. Focus, focus, focus and don’t procrastinate. In really challenging situations don’t let all the noise get in the way, don’t listen to anyone’s advice, just stay focused.

The rich life is living, not just winning. And living requires fulfillment, not simply achievement.

An extraordinary life depends on the science of achievement and the art of fulfillment. Striving without ever being satisfied makes successes hollow, not enriching. There’s always a way to make more money, but what makes you happy? What brings you joy?

SCIENCE OF ACHIEVEMENT

Mastering Skill #1 The science of achievement. This is where you master the ability of what you envision and make it real. There’s a science to achievement. There’s a science to making money. There’s a science to the body. Everyone is fundamentally different but there are certain rules and laws that if you violate you’re going to have a lack of energy, and if you really violate them your going to have Dis-ease in the body. Disease. It comes from violating those rules. If you align with the rules of achievement around the body you’ll have an abundance of energy, you’ll feel strong. you’ll have an extraordinary body and extraordinary energy that comes with in.

When you get on top, sometimes you have to fight even harder to win.

I didn’t lose my talent or drive, I lost my focus. I spent too much time and energy thinking of the losses and being paralyzed by fear, instead of letting my hunger for future wins take over when racing and training.

Where your focus goes, energy flows. If you focus on your negativity and fears, those thoughts will consume you and suck all of your energy, just as they did for me.

There’s also a second set of skill that you need to master to have a extraordinary life. That is The art of fulfillment.

ART OF FULFILLMENT

Mastering Skill #2 The art of fulfillment.

Success without fulfillment is the ultimate failure. The human mind is not going to make you happy. You have to direct it. It’s the worst to achieve everything and not feel fulfilled. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve achieved something I wanted badly and when I finally achieved it my mind said “Is this all that there is!”

In other words trade expectation for appreciation.

“Everything I do from this day forward is a bonus.” Everything in the past doesn’t matter. Everything today in the moment for me is just extra.” By appreciating what I have already accomplished, I found a way to shift my focus and alter my energy, moving beyond fear to a position of strength.

GIVING: THE SECRET FOR LIVING

Another result of my confidence has been following through my life long ambitions not related to sport. I always told myself that I wanted to help people that couldn’t help themselves. I wanted to work with disable people so that they would be able to afford the best medical supplies to live a independent active lifestyle. I realized life is not always about ME, it’s about what I can contribute.

Life is not about experiences; it’s about the meaning we attach to them. One experience will be completely different for any two people simply because of the meaning they attach to it.

As we go through life, we attach meaning to everything. Those meanings turn into emotions, and ultimately, those emotions frame the life we live.
The meaning that we attach to things is strongly influenced by either culture or someone who’s been a big part of our lives — they helped to shape our identity. But in order to transcend those beliefs we must resolve our inner conflict, get back to the root of what makes us who we are and align with that truth.

There are Negative emotions worth embracing.

Anger can be fueled into creativity. Channel you anger into the work.

Many people say that life-threatening health scares became blessings in disguise that fundamentally altered their perspectives and highlighted what’s really important in life.

“On reflection, I realized that my most valuable lessons arose from difficulties and setbacks I had to confront, and imperfections I had to accept,”

Shame — that painful feeling of humiliation or distress rooted in the belief that we’re somehow deficient — is what causes us to avoid connecting with others for fear that they’ll see the flaws we are trying to hide.

The practice of mindfulness — which aims to cultivate a focused awareness on the present moment — can change our relationship with negative emotions, allowing us to experience them without judgement or shame.

Feeling bad about having a negative emotion is a surefire way to compound and amplify the situation, You can quickly build a tower of negative emotions that can all come crumbling down.

But mindfulness practices like meditation allow us to experience negative thoughts and emotions without judgment, resistance or struggle.

There aren’t many of us who don’t have some bad habit we’d like to quit: smoking, sweets, shopping, nail-biting, porn, excessive checking of phones or social media, ect. We think we don’t have the willpower, faced with past evidence of failure after failure when we’ve tried to quit before.

We don’t think we can quit, so we don’t even try. Or if we do try, we give ourselves an “out,” and don’t fully commit ourselves.

Quitting a bad habit takes everything you’ve got.

It’s hard, but doable — if you put your entire being into it.

If you’re not good at changing habits, focus on creating a new, good habit.

You don’t actually need to follow every single one of these steps to quit a habit, but the more of them you do, the higher your chances. I recommend all of them if you want to be all in.

1. Have a big motivation. Lots of times people quit things because it sounds nice: “It would be nice to quit caffeine.” But that’s a weak motivation. What you really want is strong motivation: I quit smoking because I knew it was killing me, and I knew my kids would smoke as adults if I didn’t quit. Know your Why, and connect with it throughout your quit. Write it down at the top of a document called your “Quit Plan.”

2. Make a big commitment. Now that you know your motivation, be fully committed. A common mistake is say, “I’ll do this today,” but then letting yourself off the hook when the urges get strong. Instead, tell everyone about it. Ask for their help. Give them regular updates and be accountable. Have a support partner you can call on when you need help. Ask people not to let you off the hook. Be all in.

3. Be aware of your triggers. What events trigger your bad habit? The habit doesn’t just happen, but is triggered by something else: you smoke when other people smoke, or you shop when you’re stressed out, or you eat junk food when you’re bored, or you watch porn when you’re lonely, or you check your social media when you feel the need to fill space in your day. Watch yourself for a few days and notice what triggers your habit, make a list of triggers on your Quit Plan, and then develop an awareness of when those triggers happen.

4. Know what need the habit is meeting. We have bad habits for a reason — they meet some kind of need. For every trigger you wrote down, look at what need the habit might be meeting in that case. The habit might be helping you cope with stress. For some of the other triggers, it might help you to socialize, or cope with sadness, boredom, loneliness, feeling bad about yourself, being sick, dealing with a crisis, needing a break or treat or comfort. Write these needs down on your Quit Plan, and think of other ways you might cope with them.

5. Have a replacement habit for each trigger. So what will you do when you face the trigger of stress? You can’t just not do your old bad habit — it will leave an unfilled need, a hole that you will fill with your old bad habit if you don’t meet the need somehow. So have a good habit to do when you get stressed, or when someone gets angry at you, etc. Make a list of all your triggers on your Quit Plan, with a new habit for each one (one new, good habit can serve multiple triggers if you like).

6. Watch the urges, and delay. You will get urges to do your bad habit, when the triggers happen. These urges are dangerous if you just act on them without thinking. Learn to recognize them as they happen, and just sit there watch the urge rise and get stronger, and then and fall. Delay yourself, if you really want to act on the urge. Breathe. Drink some water. Call someone for help. Go for a walk. Get out of the situation. The urge will go away, if you just delay.

7. Do the new habit each time the trigger happens. This will take a lot of conscious effort — be very aware of when the trigger happens, and very aware of doing the new habit instead of the old automatic one. If you mess up, forgive yourself, but you need to be very conscious of being consistent here, so the new habit will start to become automatic. This is one reason it’s difficult to start with bad habits — if there are multiple triggers that happen randomly throughout the day, it means you need to be conscious of your habit change all day, every day, for weeks or more.

8. Be aware of your thinking. We justify bad habits with thinking. You have to watch your thoughts and realize when you’re making excuses for doing your old bad habit, or when you start feeling like giving up instead of sticking to your change. Don’t believe your rationalizations.

9. Quit gradually. Until recently, I was a fan of the Quit Cold Turkey philosophy, but I now believe you can quit gradually. That means cut back from 20 cigarettes to 15, then 10, then 5, then zero. If you do this a week at a time, it won’t seem so difficult, and you might have a better chance of succeeding.

10. Learn from mistakes. We all mess up sometimes — if you do, be forgiving, and don’t let one mistake derail you. See what happened, accept it, figure out a better plan for next time. Write this on your Quit Plan. Your plan will get better and better as you continually improve it. In this way, mistakes are helping you improve the method.